he past couple weeks have brought a lot of attention to the Boston bench. It's still completely unclear which two of Daniel Nava, Ryan Sweeney, Lyle Overbay, and Mike Carp (and I suppose Jackie Bradley if you take John Farrell's word for it) are going to fill the last two roster spots set aside for position players, but that's not the only question facing the Red Sox right now. There's a bullpen crunch to deal with too.
Five starting pitchers, nine starting position players (including the DH), four backups. That's 18 roster spots, leaving seven open for relievers. The Red Sox, meanwhile, have quite a few relievers:
Joel Hanrahan
Andrew Bailey
Craig Breslow
Koji Uehara
Junichi Tazawa
Daniel Bard
Clayton Mortensen